Baby and Rudy make a cameo in my video

Hey everyone!

I have not blogged in a long time.  That's what it's like living with (what seems like) 1000 cats:  There's always something to clean, someone to feed, vets to visit, cuddles to be given, etc.  All little chores that keep me from posting.  Ok, I admit, I also spend a bit of time on Facebook!

Nonetheless, I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!

As many of you know, I am also building a fledgling photography business.  This week I entered a contest to attend a wedding photography workshop with Jasmine Star, the ultimate wedding photographer.  The event is being hosted by Creative Live in Seattle and only 6 lucky photographers will be chosen to attend.  This is just the type of workshop I need to help me learn from a true professional and grow my business, so with the help of fellow photographer (and editing genius) Stephane Brazeau I created a 60-second video to enter the contest.  Of course, I had to find a way to include some of my favorite felines.  Here's the video:

If you like it, check it out on YouTube and leave a comment so that Jasmine Star and the Creative Live people will pick me.  Actually, even if you don't like it, leave a comment saying that you do :-)  I've never even won a raffle, so it would be wicked cool to be selected as one of the participants in this once-in-a-lifetime workshop.

Oh, and Baby and Rudy (who appear in a cameo at the end of the video), do NOT sign autographs, but will gladly accept catnip from fans.

Another day, another $976.30!!

So here's what I want to know:  Why is it that when a PERSON gets diarrhea, they go to the pharmacy, spend $5 on Imodium and within half an hour they're partying in the hot tub... but when a CAT gets diarrhea, it requires three trips to the vet, blood tests, rectal swabs, x-rays, intravienous fluids and hospitalization?

Of course, I am wondering this after spending a whopping $976.30 at the vet when I found Baby sleeping in her own feces, lethargic and just generally looking (and smelling!!) miserable.  Here are how the costs broke down:

JANUARY 28TH

 - Initial consultation:  $51.00

 - 1/2 day hospitalization:  $27.30
(They did not have enough staff on hand to run the tests while I was there, so I had to pay to have them "hospitalize" her - i.e. stick her in a cage - until they take some blood)
 - X-rays (top and side views):  $89.00
 - Blood tests, general:  $104.00
 - Duplocilline injection:  $19.22
 - Rectal swab:  $37.50
 - Fecal analysis:  $26.00
 - Lab analysis of cultures:  $80.60
(Yes, you read this correctly, I have to pay for the vet do to the fecal analysis and then pay AGAIN for them to send it out to the lab for a second opinion)
 - Fluroscene test:  $15.00
(This is actually something I asked for, because the 3rd membrane in her eyes looked wonky and based on all her vision problems I wanted to catch any issues early - sure enough, she has ulcers again!)
 - Taxes:  $57.89

SUB-TOTAL      $507.51

JANUARY 29TH

 - Intraveinous fluids:  $93.50

 - Intraveinous fluids, maintenance: $37.00
(Because this is not covered in the above cost!?!?)
 - FIV/FLV test:  $75.22
(Every time I go to the vet, they always insist I have this test done, but since I screen all my cats before bringing them in the house, there is like a 0.0000001% chance they could possibly have lukemia or aids, but they always sucker me into doing the test, and as usual it came out negative!)
 - Administration of oral medication:  $7.50
(This is apparently the fee for the 5 seconds it takes to make a cat swallow a pill... which works out to $90/minute or $5,400/hr.!!!) 
 - Ampicilline 500mg injection:  $15.04
 - 1 can of food:  $1.72
 - 1 day hospitalization:  $47.25
(There are some motels around here that are cheaper!!)
 - Administration of oral medication:  $7.50
(Blows me away that I have to pay $7.50 every time they shove a pill down her throat!!)
 - Taxes:  $45.84

SUB-TOTAL      $330.57

JANUARY 30TH

 - New "special" food (2.72 kg):  $28.28
(This is $10.39/kg, which is cheaper than fresh salmon)

 - Safe-guard (Antibiotic):  $12.23
 - Cypro-heptadine (appetite stimulant):  $14.95
 - Florentero (Activia for cats):  $22.00
 - Gancyclovir (eye drops):  $45.00
(The drops are not even in stock, but I have to pay for them before they will place the order, like I am some kind of deadbeat!)
 - Taxes:  $15.77

SUB-TOTAL     $138.23

This is Baby at the vet.  She is clearly not pleased about her circumstances - but at least SHE didn't have to pay the bill!!  A friend suggested that I am the "America's Most Wanted" of the veterinary world:  They all have photos of me in their offices and when I walk through the door, they suggest every test under the sun, because they know I will do whatever I can to help animals in need.  Sometimes I wonder if they ARE just taking advantage of me, or if all this "medicine" is really necessary... Next time I may just crush up an Imodium and put it in the food.

On a side note, would you believe that on the Imodium website, they actually have a Bathroom Finder?  Like someone who has it so bad is going to log onto the Imodium site to find the nearest bathroom as opposed to... I dunno... OPENING THEIR EYES???  Only in America!!

My visit to Muskoka

Well my followers (all NINE of you!!), I know I have been a bad, bad blogger; not blogging in over a week!  I have no excuse.  I have not been any busier than usual, have had no emergency vet visits, no CATastrophees to deal with, not even a snotty kitten nose to unplug.  I appologize for leaving you all hanging, but based on the flood of e-mails I received (more like a trickle from a dried up well!) demanding more fodder, I will assume that you found other things to occupy your time and we'll just move on...

I actually spent last week anticipating a photography workshop at The Muskoka Wildlife Center which I attended this past Saturday.  "What does this have to do with your cats?" you may ask... Well, as an avid feline afficionado, my appreciation goes far beyond your average (or in my case, super-cute) house cat.  I have always been fascinated by the BIG cats, so when I saw the opportunity to get up close with some of our native wildlife, I jumped at the chance, packed my camera gear, booked a room at the fabulous Inn On Bay in Gravenhurst and embarked on my 7-hour drive to Muskoka.

While the "photography workshop" aspect of the day was less than stellar for the $230 fee, the three hours that I spent in very close proximity to the cougar, lynx, wolves and bobcat was well worth the price of admission!  As an added bonus, Dale, the co-director and owner of the facility was with us the entire time and generously shared his wealth of knowledge about each species, answered all our questions and even told us the stories of how each animal came to be at his rehab center.  How do I get a job like that?  Oh yeah, I would have had to finish those darned biology classes in school!  But I digress...

Our little group of 5 photographers (Plus the "workshop leader") spent the morning with Dale and Keith (A wildlife caregiver at the facility).  They started our adventure with a quick safety briefing and then led us INTO the enclosure with two wolves, Montana and Akayla.  Now, just to give you an idea of how close we really were to these impressive animals, I shot this photo of the guy next to me:

Surprisingly, the wolves were quite timid and although they would cautiously approach us to see what we were all about, as soon as someone would cough, move a little too abruptly or sometimes even just click the shutter release, the wolves would take off in the opposite direction.  Of course, they eventually got used to us and got pretty bored at being the object of our admiration.

To be honest, I was getting bored too.  After all, I was here for the cats, so I was thrilled when we moved on to our next model:  the cougar!  This time we were not allowed to enter the enclosure and when I got a closer look at Kokanee, an 8-year old adult male, I understood why:  He is ALL muscle and teeth!  Even sitting safely behind a fence to take photos of him, I admit that I was intimidated when he would run up, licking his lips in anticipation of some fresh venison.  Of course, this did not supress my inate urge to reach out and pet him, but I showed tremendous restraint and was satisfied just being so close to such a magnificent creature.

Kokanee was born in captivity and raised by humans.  As a result, he cannot be released back into the wild.  Dale explained to us that although it "sucks to live in captivity", the best thing he can do to improve the lives of these animals is to provide companionship.  Unfortunately, another cougar was not available (and Dale is already married), so Kokanee lives with a black bear!!  It being winter and all, the black bear, Kootenay was snuggled up in his winter den, but he did poke his nose out to say hello to us before going back to sleep.  I will definitely be back in the spring to check out this odd couple!

Next we moved on to the lynx, which was the highlight of my day.  Not only were we able to enter the enclosure to photograph Yeti, the adult lynx, up close, but we were treated to some very playful behavior when someone accidentally spilled Coke all over the snow (NO, it was NOT me!!).  Since felines are curious by nature and love to investigate new smells, Yeti was fascinated by the Coke and immediately began to roll in it!
 

Dale then brought out Rufus, the one-eyed Bobcat, whose story is so poignant that I will save it for an entry of its own later this week.  While we played paparazzi with Rufus, Keith went to fetch the juvenile lynx, who bounded into the enclosure, chased snowballs, rubbed against us, jumped over us, bounced off trees and generally just had a grand old time.  She was so much like a kitten, that I felt right at home.  In fact, I was so captivated by her antics that I hardly took any photos!! After about 20 minutes, she collapsed on a snowbank with a leaf she had "caught" and decided she needed to take a break.

I could have stayed in that enclosure all day, just watching her play, but the rest of the group was anxious to move on to our next, and final, subject of the day - a tiny saw-whet owl named Luna.

We photographed this delightful and cooperative little creature for a while and then slowly headed back to the main building and parking lot.  I wish I could have stayed longer, listened to more of Dale's stories and just immersed myself in the atmosphere of this wonderful place... As I was driving away, I was already planning for another visit in the spring! 

And this is why we don't allow cats in the bedroom...

While I am a sound sleeper (I have to be with those freight train noises beside me every night), Gaby claims that he can't sleep if I am so much as reading because every time I turn a page the sound wakes him up!  As a result, before we go to bed at night, our routine includes a sweep of the bedroom to ensure that there are no cats hiding under the bed, in the closet, in the drawers or anywhere else.  Although cats don't make noise during the night, they do tend to attack toe, run across our faces or do other nefarious things that are just as disruptive to our sleep, so they are banned from the bedroom at night (except when I sneak one in to sleep under the covers with me).

Every now and then, however, one of the cats will get wise and hide INSIDE the box spring, thereby not getting caught in our pre-sleep sweep.  Believe it or not, they have managed to rip apart the batting underneath the bed and have made themselves a nice little hidey hole for just such occasions.  Last nigh, Max decided to stow away in this hideout and this morning, at 5:30am, he decided that we had slept long enough and joined us on the bed, where he made himself at home on top of Gaby.  

For some reason, they never disturb ME in the morning - maybe because I am not the one who makes anything off-limits... Now, while some people wake up full of energy and smiles, looking forward to a new day, Gaby is not one of them.  In the best of circumstances (like when he's had 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep) he wakes up grumpy and cranky and can only grunt in monosylables until he's had his cereal.  When he wakes up because a cat is sitting on his chest, licking his nose and breathing cat breath into his face... well, let's just say this is why we don't allow cats in the bedroom!

So my morning started off with stomping, cursing and doors slamming... how was yours?

Baby Pictures

I don't have much time today, so I thought I would indulge those of you who have asked to see cute cat pictures.  These were taken 5 years ago, when we were raising our first litter of kittens.I had met a woman at Loblaws one day while I was waiting at the checkout line, we got to talking and yadda, yadda, yadda... a few months later our vet called me with the happy news that our cat, "Shady" had given birth to 7 healthy kittens.

Since we didn't HAVE a cat named Shady (We have a Shadow, but he's definitely a male so unless by some miracle of science he got pregnant and made his way to the vet to give birth) I thought the vet must be mistaken... then when he told me who had dropped off the cat, it all clicked into place. 

So we brought the new family home, installed them in the spare bedroom and decided to raise the kittens until they were old enough to adopt out.  Yeah, RIGHT!!  At least that was the plan as I explained it to Gaby when I arrived home with 7 kittens and very ferocious mamma cat in tow.  Gaby had never had kittens before, however, so I was counting on him falling in love with a couple that we could keep...

How could anyone not love these faces??

Who knew that we would BOTH fall in love with all seven?

Well we did, and they are all still here, hogging the blankets on the bed and living happily ever after.   

My adventures with snot.

Last night I snuck Baby into the bedroom because she is not feeling well and she wanted to snuggle up under the covers with me.  I had to sneak her in because Gaby refuses to let the cats sleep with us anymore just because they tend to get a little restless and play with the blinds or climb the curtains or (God forbid) PURR and wake him up... But this was BABY.  How could I say no to that face?

The thing about Baby is that when she was a baby, only one week old, in fact, she had a severe case of Rhinovirus which forced us to hospitalize her at the dreaded DMV emergency clinic for several days, where they drained the mucus from her nose and inserted a breathing tube. 

When she finally came home she had to be bottle fed (by me) every two hours (all through the night) for another several days (and nights) to be sure she regained her strength.  She almost died.  It was very scary and during that time when I was taking care of her we developed a special bond, so I'm sure you can understand how a) when she's sick she wants to be with me and b) I have this weird maternal instinct to take care of her.

So anyway, I snuck her into the bedroom and under the covers and Gaby was none the wiser.  We were sound asleep when I was awakend by a horrific sneezing fit from the little furry bundle beside me (Gaby was snoring so loudly that he never heard a thing).  I'm sure you have all seen your cats do those delicate little sneezes, then shake their heads, lick their paws and wipe their faces?  Yeah, well Baby is a whole other story.

Baby has developed a technique for sitting up, stretching her neck out and leaning it back at an angle like something from The Excorcist and sneezing from the depths of her soul to expunge all the mucus in her lungs.  Now you can see from the photo above that she has teensy tiny nostrils, so I'm sure you can understand my surprise when my face was hit with a wet, sticky mass of projectile cat snot that could have filled the inside of a jelly donut (not that anyone would WANT to fill a donut with cat snot, but you get the idea).

So there I was in bed, in the dark, with cat snot starting to congeal on my face.  I had to get us both out of there before the beast beside me (AKA Gaby) awoke.  I hustled Baby into the bathroom where I then performed a snotectomy with my trusty tweezers (actually, I used Gaby's tweezers - he'll never know, because he never reads my blog!) and methodically pulled the rest of the dried up, crusty snot from her nose.  I can assure you, there are things I would prefer to be doing at 2:30 am, but alas, I am a dedicated cat mommy and Gaby had to work in the morning, so I was on snot-removal duty.

Once I was done with the messy stuff, I brought Baby to her room (yes, our second bedroom is a nursery of a whole other kind!!) where I wanted to settle her into her own bed for the night.  Unfortunately, Rudy was comfortably nestled in and not in the mood for sharing:

 

I tried the couch downstairs, but it, too was buried under a heap of sleeping cats, so I brought Baby into my little shoebox of an office (one of the only cat-free zones in the house - besides my clothes closet and the pantry in the kitchen, though I have even found cats in there sometimes), settled her onto my lap in a blanket and tried to get her to go to sleep. 

I was so worried about Baby's nose getting clogged up again that I had visions of her suffocating during the night, so I wound up staying up with her all night, periodically cleaning her nostrils, cuddling her and generally trying to keep her sneezing fits to a minimum. 

Ok, I admit, I also spent some time on Facebook talking to Tamara my fellow insomniac, farming and doing Mafia stuff, after all, my computer was RIGHT THERE... But I must stress that I DID NOT get sucked into a turf war with some guy named Don Bender and spend $100 on my credit card buying pretend weapons to take out his Mafia because I am addicted to Facebook games or anything.  I was simply looking for a way to pass the time between snotectomies.  Really.

The good news is that Baby is doing much better today and I was able to get all the caked snot off my face.  The bad news is that I think I need a new pillow...

Distractions, distractions!!

My day started with such great intentions... I was going to finish classifying my photos, work on my new website and maybe watch a movie and catch an afternoon nap with the kittens later.  Unfortunately, living with (almost) 1000 cats means that my day begins and ends with distractions:

I wake up to a plethora of whining cats who need to be fed three different kinds of food, have their water changes and their litter boxes cleaned (you'd be amazed how much poop thirty-two cats can produce in a day!).

Note that these are in our basement, which is unfinished...

This is not what our HOUSE looks like (at least not on most days!)

Gaby conveniently wakes up once most of the work is done and immediately starts questioning me about where his pants are (crumpled on the floor in the bathroom where he left them last night).  I roll out of bed and catch a glimpse of a slimy puked-up hairball peeking out from under the bed, but as I rustle through the cleaning supplies in the hall closet, I realize that a cat got in overnight and now it smells suspiciously urinous (is that a word??)...

OK, just a quick little clean-up before I get down to work, should take no time at all. I kiss my man goodbye (on the cheek, because he won’t come near me when I haven’t brushed my teeth) and crawl back into bed to read one more chapter of my trashy vampire novel before I deal with the latest cat mess. 

After I finish with the hairball & pee clean-up, that's when I discover the pile of stinky clothes stuffed behind the couch as though it’s some new storage spot.  Can you guess who put it there? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't me and it wasn't one of the cats (although they have been known to steal the bathmat and bring it downstairs to the living room).  I head downstairs with my bundle of stench to do a quick load of laundry... but when I get downstairs I find Sneaky Pete sleeping in the laundry basket.

Sneaky Pete was so named for his aptitude for sneaking around

unseen and unheard and turning up in the most interesting places...

He gives me a look that clearly says, "Back off biotch", so I have to work around him, which means that the sheets won't be getting washed today.  Of course, this is when the 8-month old kittens realize that I am in the basement - a wild and exotic place they dare not venture on their own for fear of being pounced on by one of the more dominant cats.  With me as their guardian and chaperone, it soon becomes a free-for-all and Potato decides to investigate the washing machine.

I now KNOW that my Potato is related to the Chapman-Bombardier Potato

due to their shared fascination for washers/dryers.

As I scoop Potato off the washer, I hear a plaintive wailing from the other room where the strays hang out during the winter.  I run over and open the door just in time to prevent Hobo from moving in for the kill on Bob who is cornered under a chair and too far from the open window to escape. As soon as I enter, Hobo backs off and nonchalantly settles onto the couch where he tries to look innocent.   

Unfortunately, Hobo is not allowed into the house

to mix with the "General Population" since he is such a fighter,

but he has a cozy spot on my old couch in the basement

where thanks to a cat door in the window, he can come and go as he pleases.

It seems to be my day for pee, because I notice that in his fear, Bob has liberally wet the floor, the chair that he clambered over to escape and the shelf near the exit.  OK, it’ll only take me a couple of minutes to clean this up and fold the clothes I just took out of the dryer before I can get to work on my website.

As I head back to the laundry area, I find that my little rascals have figured out how to get the dryer door open... OK, I admit, in my haste to break up World War 3, I may not have shut it properly.  Of course, as soon as I shout, "OUT", they realize that this must be a fun new game and that maybe I have hidden catnip in the dryer (who knows why cats think the way they do?!).

Granted, Mr. Winky only has one eye,

but surely he can find his way OUT of the dryer... ??

By the time I shoo everyone out of the dryer, the clothes hampers and the sink (?!?), it’s feeding time at the zoo again and there are twenty sets of expectant eyes looking up at me as I walk into the kitchen. I rinse out all the food bowls (cats are clean animals and like to eat from clean plates) and start doling out tonight’s menu of; 

• Prescription Diet chicken dinner for the downstairs cats.
• Prescription Diet geriatric dinner for Daisy (she's like 18 or 19 and that stuff keeps her going like some sort of preservative!).
• Prescription Diet weight control for the kittens (the ones who are now actually 4 years old, but we still call them kittens).
• Prescription Diet kitten food for the NEW kittens, who we refer to as the "boos".
• Friskies for Squirt and Mumsie, who absolutely refuse to eat anything else.

Then I make the rounds of the water bowls and dry food bowls and replenish everything.

For some reason, I feel completely wiped out, so I pour myself a glass of wine and plop down on the couch for 15 minutes of TV before I log on to Facebook to harvest my crops and do a few jobs in Mafia Wars. That’s when Gaby walks in the door and asks me what’s for dinner.

My day begins and ends with distractions. But I can always work on the website tomorrow…